Job, where is thy sting!?

I am just a fish, trapped with-in the confines of my water tank. At first, I used to feel sad, neglected and depressed that life ain’t fair. Why do I have to be stuck inside a small tank? But seeing my master searching for a job, has made me re-evaluate a couple of life’s principles and ideologies.

Look, we all know that finding a job ain’t easy. And what feels worse, is that even if you are qualified, like for instance I am to swim in a lake, it is not always easy going if the space you are fighting with-in is big and full of unfair occurrences. I guess I am happy to be part of a small tank, rather than trying to survive out there. Because boy, I gotta admit, seeing master struggle to find a job, I am content that he at-least finds time to feed me every week!

And each time he comes home from an interview dejected, I know exactly what’s running in his mind.

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The Job situation is such a tricky business for both local & international students in any country these days, that getting one is like getting a new lease of life!

Alright, here’s the deal. I will shoot straight, and not mince words. After all, time is of the essence; especially for me, because once I finish typing this heart-felt apology to all the job seekers out there, on behalf of the butcher-like employers, I have an interview to attend myself. It’s kind of a interview you know, as I am trying to qualify for a bigger and more posh tank.

Every young job seeker, fresh out of a modern day human assault factory called University, is seeking a full- time job. If not that, then perhaps a part-time one, or even a casual job. In-fact, we are willing to settle for even a hour’s job, irrespective of it paying or not. The truth is, we aren’t getting any.

It is the same rut everyday, every time, over and over again. Now, things might be a little easy for the lucky few ‘connected with contacts ones’, but for most of us who long to belong, but are stuck in the staleness of the bureaucratic drama called ‘no-vacancy’ status, it is almost next to impossible.

And it is easily explainable why: it is like Damocles Sword; no one will hire us because we don’t have experience, and we can’t get experience unless we complete the months of unpaid labor called internships which are again impossible to get because we need sufficient work experience. Hours of dish-washing, cleaning cars, mopping floors, throwing out rubbish, is all that we have to boot in the name of work experience. And personally I think, people who have these jobs are still lucky.

Students at university are welcomed with open arms—considering that we bring in a lot of capital, we should jolly well be welcomed—but then are shunned like a disease. In-fact, most of the diseases have a cure these days, but joblessness, nah, wait till the search sucks every last bit of our blood, and then drops us like a bad habit.

Just the other day, a friend of my masters’ called me in the middle of the night. Annoyed, he nonetheless answered his call. After a lot of ecstatic mumbling from the other side, he managed to figure out that his friend finally got a job. But wait for it; after 3 and half years of graduating from University.

Now I don’t know if the wait is worth-while or not, but let me tell you from experience, that there are a million of kids like my master out there, waiting and waiting for their chance under the sun. All they demand is just once chance. Like Rocky, it will be their one in a million chance, and God knows, they will take it. They will sit so tight on their seats, that perhaps a bullet to the head will be the only way to get them out of the office!

People are desperate, needy, poor and hungry—especially after paying all the fees and bearing a cosmopolitan city’s unbelievable living costs—and they deserve a shot. They slogged and labored through University, got out on top, not to sit and stare with watery eyes at people in suits, walking down the main avenue in the CBD, all happy and content.

That one moment, when they will have that suit, that car, that house, that job, that LIFE, they will know weren’t just the untouchables.

But until then, the search continues.

And for me too. It is time for me to see my master again head out towards the Lion’s Den for the interview, where they are waiting to devour him.

Pray—whatever the result maybe—that my master’s tombstone reads anything but a LOSER!